Big Family; Small (motor)Home

We just put up the cloth cradle we’ve intended to use from the beginning. It’s a baby hammock, designed to be baby’s bed, and my wonderful husband hung it over our bed in Benny so that now, it is possible to put Cassidy (6 months) in the hammock, and then (until Annabelle–22 months–joins us sometime in the night) the mommy and the daddy can be alone in the bed. The luxury of having no one but the two of us in our full size bed cannot be overstated. We can both lay flat on our backs if we want to, without our shoulders overlapping!

Sometimes when Annabelle creeps into our bed in the middle of the night, David will switch ends of the bed so that he and Annabelle have their heads at the foot of the bed, and their feet (David’s more than Annabelle’s) next to my head. This helps because feet are narrower than shoulders.

When Cassidy wakes in the night, I bring him down into the bed with me to nurse. Since the hammock is just two feet above our bed, I barely have to sit up to accomplish this. When he’s done nursing I either do nothing because I am asleep, or I can put him back in the hammock and enjoy the more room in the bed.

There is an entire other bed that Ada too often gets completely to herself while the rest of us play puzzle pieces in our bed. The table and benches convert into a bed that the girls share–Ada at one end, and Annabelle at the other. I guess I should be grateful that Ada stays in that one, at least!

I love this idea! My husband, two kiddos and myself will be hitting the road in spring and I have been brainstorming how to replace our youngest’s crib. He’ll be much too big for this by the time we leave, but I am absolutely infatuated with it as an option I wasn’t aware of!